Innovative ideas and tips for supporting Ed Tech

Writing Math Stories using My Maps

The last couple of weeks I’ve worked on several different workshops and a presentation. This has made me think quite a bit about active learning and students as the creator. I’ve also grown to understand students internalize their learning when it is meaningful and authentic to them. This is when I thought why can’t My Maps be used to help the students collect data. After they’ve collected this real world data the student can open a Google Slide and create a “Math Stories about the My Map Journey” they created.

The beauty of this is in the end the student may link the Google Slide Math story to the My Map Journey. Imagine a math journey where you can actually zoom in on the roads being measured. The student may include actual screen-captures of the roadways and locations mentioned in their stories. A project like this can unlock the creative writer as well as the mathematician hidden within every child.

Creating a Directional My Map

Have students map a bicycle journey from school to a nearby location

Open My Maps

In search window type beginning location

Example address or name of school, store and etc…

Drop Pin for the location

Click “Directions to here” icon

Add a second location

Click layer where first pin was dropped

Drop pin above the second location

Title the marker with the name of the location

Now click the measure distances and areas ruler

Measure between the two points double click to add the distance to the layer

Click the layer options settings (3 vertical dots)

Select open data table

Edit the table.

Under Description for the starting point type “0” miles & starting point

Edit location 2 with the milage from measuring & type from start or beginning point